I am often asked whether or not it is possible to appear in multiple city searches outside the business's actual physical location? In other words, say you are an SEO agency in San Jose (home of the Sharks) but want to target clients in Santa Clara and Fremont, CA as well. Is it possible to rank in multiple cities on Google? If you've been asking that question, this post is for you.
The fact of the matter is, many businesses do service more than one geographic location, and in my opinion, there isn't anything sneaky or tricky about wanting to get that point across. For the average person, the first idea that often comes to mind is to create a listing for every city.
Ahem… Unfortunately, Google Places guidelines (aka do it or you will never be heard of again, muahahaha) does specifically say you should not "create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist". Likewise, they say that "P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations".
Right, people, you have to tell me these things, okay? I've been frozen for thirty years, okay? Throw me a frickin' bone here!
How to rank in multiple locations on Google Maps
Furthermore, Google says that businesses operating in a service area, as opposed to a fixed location should not create a listing for every city they service. Instead, Google recommends that these "businesses should create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas".
That isn't bad advice, but as with any other well-meaning (but not always functional) advice, I'd take it with the grain of salt. #mattcutts
That's not to say you shouldn't designate a service area, I'm just saying, don't expect to get ranked right away in two days, solely because you "read and followed the guidelines".
Ranking in local search results
Since trying to rank for multiple cities in Local/Maps is pretty much a headache, a smarter alternative is to go after the organic search results. Start by creating pages on your website geared specifically at targeting cities you want to be in. Take the phrase "san jose nutritionist" for example, here we see two types of results giving, one being local/maps and the others are standard web results.
Local business rank without an address
Similarly, if you run your business from home and don't want to have your address made available to the general public... organic seo for local search is a very quick and inexpensive way to establish a distinctive local presence. For example, the video bellow shows me ranking for not one but eight different cities in over a fifty mile radius without any address whatsoever.
I know I'm making this all sound a bit too easy, which is something I don't want to do. So remember, just like every other seo campaign, organic local rankings are based on page/keyword optimization, domain authority, link signals, anchor text, content relevance (and possibly) some confirmatory social signals such as Authorship.
In sum, what is good for the goose is not always good for the gander and and vice versa; no two local campaigns are alike, local rankings don't depend only and solely on the creation of local keyword pages, and you may have to combine some or all these methods to see results.
And that about wraps it up. I hope you’ve gained some useful tips, I hope your local rankings increase, and if you would like to share your strategy please do so in the comments below.
